For I recollect distinctly, that, on my requesting to hear your opinion how an English version ought to be attempted, your answer was, that the “Magic Ring” would, if _literally_ translated, make a very amusing novel in the style adopted among us sixty years ago in “Popular Tales of the Germans,” and which, by the way, has been recently exemplified in Mr Roscoe’s Italian Romances. With regard to the _old-Frankish tournure_ of language, the stiffness with which a translator too often moves through his task, and which has been aptly compared to the performance of our Macheath “dancing a hornpipe in real fetters,” might perhaps serve as a tolerable imitation of that characteristic. As to the songs and other poetry, these, you said, were merely portions of the story thrown into rhyme, and would succeed just as well in prose as in verse. Lastly, You observed, that, for understanding the author’s allegorical allusions, nothing more was requisite than to bear in mind the history of the Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, &c.; otherwise known by the name of the Normans (Nordmänner) or “Men of the North.” These people (represented in this work by an ancient warrior, bearing in his latter days the name of Sir Hugh von Trautwangen,) being poor, and dissatisfied with their own cold regions, emigrated in great numbers to the more southern countries of France, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy; nay, it is said, even into Greece, Palestine, and other oriental climes. Of these historical facts, no school-boy in Britain is ignorant, as every one has read of Normandy and the Norman invasion. The Nordmänner, or Normans, at the first period of their emigrations, were Pagans,--the votaries of Odin and the other fabulous gods of Valhalla; they were also skilled in necromancy and all the varied arts of the magician,--whether for purposes of good or evil,--wherein (as learned divines have sometimes maintained of the ancient oracles) the devil might be supposed to have assisted them. Such are the materials whence Fouqué has drawn the machinery of his romances. The _white_ magic of the now converted Druda contends against the black machinations of the infidel Gerda; and as for the “Mysterious Ring,” it seems to have been only one among other necromantic spells, though some readers have supposed that the author hereby intended to allegorize the delusive spirit of the World, and of the worldly-minded, in opposition to that of pure religion and heavenly affections. Hence the Baron has represented the people of the North as led astray to wage war against all nations and against each other; till at last, by the influence of Bertha, (a personification of the true Christian faith,) they become harmonized and happily united into one community.